Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Lord Campbell-Savours and Lord Martin of Springburn

Monday 25th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)]

My Lords, I intervene briefly to strongly support the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Deben. I refer back to two previous contributions that I made on this subject over recent years and, in particular, to correspondence from Councillor Colin Barrow of Westminster City Council. When the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill was going through Parliament, he wrote to the department expressing concern about how it would operate. This was at a time when, as the noble Lord may recall, the square was inhabited—if I may use that term—by a lot of protesters who were setting up tents and making a lot of noise. At that time, I did not make the proposal that I want to make today. I am using this amendment as a peg on which to promote a principle.

We all believe in the right to demonstrate but we are concerned about noise. We know that people on the West Front—particularly officials of the political parties who work in offices there—have a lot of problems when demonstrations take place, especially during the summer months when they wish to open their windows and, of course, the noise becomes even more prevalent. As Colin Barrow proposed in his correspondence of some years ago, it may be possible to manage the whole square or the green areas in front of Parliament in a better way.

I propose that we establish a centre on one of those pieces of land where people can apply to put up their stands on behalf of various campaigns, perhaps on a rotational basis, months in advance. It would be a lobbying building for Parliament and it would give people the opportunity to recognise that we want to help them protest, but in an organised way. In doing so, we would support the principles set out by Councillor Colin Barrow of Westminster City Council when he asked for a more properly managed square-control arrangement.

I know that the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Deben, is more tightly defined—he is dealing with a narrower area—but I believe that we should think in terms of something more organised whereby organisations throughout the country can apply to demonstrate. At the moment, in the Upper Committee Corridor we effectively have a more organised arrangement which people can apply to use, but they cannot demonstrate. I want something a little more aggressive than what is available with the displays there, so that people can put their case. Instead of MPs simply driving past and not being able to read the signs or hear what is being said because the noise is overwhelming, there would be a place where MPs or Peers could stroll over, walk through the centre, see who had their stands there, talk to the lobbyists and then leave. That would be a far more sensible operation. I am not asking for it to be set up tomorrow, but in the longer term, it would be wise if we were to set off down that road. I support the noble Lord’s amendment.

[Lord Martin of Springburn (CB)]

My Lords, the loud-hailing which took place in Parliament Square was a disgrace. Most of us who have fought elections at council and parliamentary level have used loud-hailing equipment. When that equipment goes above a certain noise level, it becomes a breach of the peace. It is not the first time. When we have been out on the hustings, we have been reminded of that.

That strange character sat in Parliament Square for 10 years, and all sorts of organisations tried to help: the Greater London Council, Westminster Council, the police, Parliament and even the Home Office. Legislation went through both Houses, but it was not strong enough, and the judges said, “No. The chap who is there”—I forget his name—“can use the pavement because it is not really a pavement in the proper sense of the word”. All I can say is that if somebody were sitting outside their house, they would find good legal cause to get rid of him after 10 years.

The other place found arrangements to prevent loud-hailing at that end, but it cannot speak for this autonomous body. That is why the demonstrators have moved up. However, if anyone uses a loud-hailer that gets above a certain level, they are being a nuisance. Even the media agreed with that. The people who had been aggravated most by the person who was on the loud-hailer all day and every day, the character who stood there for 10 years, were those in the Press Gallery. When Parliament went into Recess, people from the Press Gallery went out and told the person concerned in no uncertain terms, “Please stop”.

I support the amendment. An overall body should get control of this situation because the difficulty that Westminster Council had was that its only way of stopping the noise was if the sound level went above a certain decibel level. It had to come along with its testing equipment, and it could have been that the wind was in a different direction or whatever. I know that this amendment is tight. The noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, suggested we should have a stall where people could come and demonstrate. No one is stopping demonstrations, but this is my understanding of a demonstration: the first time I had a demonstration at Parliament, I was a young trade unionist; I had a day off work; we travelled down in the morning by train; and at night we went back on the train and were away. It was not permanent.

Parliament Square is like a park. It is a lovely place where people should be able to take their family. There should not be a stall there. The place should be enjoyed by everyone. Millions have been spent on Westminster Abbey; millions have been spent on St Margaret’s Church, with which we have a close connection; and, of course, millions have been spent on both Houses, Portcullis House and the other extensions. If it is not already the case, the whole area should be a world heritage site. We should not have someone coming along with a loud-hailer that is so loud that people cannot get on with their proper business in the offices.

Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill

Debate between Lord Campbell-Savours and Lord Martin of Springburn

Tuesday 5th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Martin of Springburn (CB)]

My Lords, I know that the noble Lord put this amendment down in good faith. I can see the negative aspect of consulting with the Speaker and the Lord Speaker. First, the legislation states that the person who shall appoint the registrar is the Minister, not the Speakers of both Houses. There is an old saying that if you hire the person, the unpleasant task of firing them is also yours. Things would need to get very serious indeed for a Minister to find that the registrar was so unfit that he or she would have to be removed.

There is a danger, which has happened with other appointees to the House, where the individual concerned could appear on the face of it to have a good personality and to be a likeable person; they strike up a rapport with the media and use the media against the authority that has decided to remove them. It is easy for the media to indulge in a good person/bad person scenario.

I think that the question that the media would ask is: have the Speaker of the House of Commons and the Speaker of the House of Lords been consulted? The Minister might find it quite easy to say, “Yes, they have been consulted”. If dismissal is to take place, it goes without saying that the Speakers of both Houses have agreed with that proposition. If the responsibility is given to the Minister via the Bill, any difficulties should be left at the Minister’s door.

I think that the parliamentary commissioner, whom we have for both Houses, is appointed for either four or five years nonrenewable. That is a satisfactory way to deal with the matter: the registrar gets a five-year nonrenewable appointment—I know that that is not what the amendment provides. Then, when there is a parting of the ways, there are no hard feelings, whereas the Bill talks about a third renewed appointment. I have not looked fully into the responsibilities of the registrar, but I know about the parliamentary commissioner. If the third reappointment is not given, it would be considered a slur on the incumbent.

I understand that in the 1950s and prior to that, no one bothered the Speaker or the Lord Chancellor—they did not have a Lord Speaker. In recent years, the Speaker has been attacked for many reasons, and he or she is an easy target because the rule for a Speaker is that you do not respond to a press attack. That makes him or her a very easy target. I would be happier if the Minister who made the appointment made the decision. It would take a genius of a registrar to get things so badly wrong as to get him or herself sacked. In such a controversial situation, we should leave both high offices out of the legislation.

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)]

My Lords, in a sentence, I oppose the amendment. The registrar is not an officer of Parliament. If the registrar had been an officer of Parliament, I would be in favour of the amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, this amendment is about the use of the portcullis. This is an issue that concentrated the minds of Members of the House of Commons Select Committee who considered the issue of lobbying during the 1980s, nearly 30 years ago. That inquiry followed the previous inquiries of 1969 and 1974 by the Select Committee on Members’ Interests (Declaration). At that time in the 1980s, we had been considering a register for those in the industry who had access to Parliament, not government. In an attempt to think through the consequences of adopting such a register, we visited Canada, a country that at the time had only recently introduced a system that included registering lobbying activity, thereby going further than the Government’s current proposals.

What quickly became obvious to us during the course of our inquiry and from what we learnt in Canada was that many in the lobbying industry saw registered access to Parliament as a marketing tool. As Sir Trevor Lloyd-Hughes, a leading influence in the industry at the time, said in his evidence:

“Some of the PR people may announce claims in their glossy brochures of all kinds of entrée to the House of Commons and their ability to do this and that and the other, which I think are almost against the fair trading description legislation”.

He went on to say that he did not do that himself, although he added:

“If you are in business, surely you are entitled to say, we can do this and in my case as quite a few of you know I have been here since 1949. I say I have got experience and contacts. I have. It is true”.

Now I recognise that we are not talking here about Parliament but about government. However, there is an element of overlap. The moment that an organisation receives registration approval, that approval will bring with it an element of public recognition. The assumption will be made, particularly abroad, that a code exists and standards are being met. For many, government and Parliament will be indistinguishable. They will be regarded as the same, perhaps even by some here at home. I am in my amendment simply seeking, in the absence of a proper code of conduct, to lay down a requirement that at least the portcullis, a symbol of Parliament, is not used to promote a particular lobbying operation or organisation.

As Gavin Devine, chief executive of MHP Communications, said in his evidence to the House of Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Committee during its inquiry:

“There is a real danger that a register by itself may make the situation worse, since it is likely those on the register will describe themselves as a ‘registered’ or ‘approved’ lobbyists, without having to meet at least some minimum standards. In short, there is a risk that the register will give a kitemark or endorsement to some who do not deserve it”.

Again I say that I recognise that Parliament is tangential to the Bill. Nevertheless, we need to make it clear in the Bill that we will not tolerate the use of the portcullis as a marketing tool in what, in effect, is to be an unregulated marketplace. I beg to move.

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendment 73 but, before doing so, I wish to say that I fully endorse the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, in relation to Amendment 72. He may recall that one particular Member of Parliament decided to publish a book—an act of fiction—on the front cover of which was the portcullis. It was clearly there to try to give the impression that the book was authorised by the House. The Member would not listen but the publisher did, to the extent that the royal crown—I think it was the prince’s crown—was taken off the second edition, although the portcullis gate was left on. That, at least, was something. It is right and fitting that the portcullis should be the symbol of both our Houses and not of any individual organisation.

Turning to Amendment 73, I recall the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, saying in an earlier debate that you have to know whom you are dealing with. That has to be clear. Those who hold press cards in the House of Commons are very well looked after, but it is the taxpayer, not their newspaper, who provides them with a desk and facilities. In fact, I believe that some journalists do not even have a place to hang their hat at their newspaper’s head office. I recall that only about five years ago the health and safety situation here was so bad for journalists—some of the senior reporters were using portakabins—that it was put to me that it was time we did something. Both Houses paid a share of £8 million to refurbish the Press Gallery. We even opened a restaurant, which is named after a highly respected journalist called Chris Moncrieff—it is called Moncrieff’s bar. We did all that and it is lovely. I was there to officiate at the opening, and so was Chris Moncrieff. I said, “It’s not bad that two teetotallers have opened up a drinking place”.

There was not one bad piece of publicity about that £8 million but nor was there one good piece of publicity about it. Nothing was said about it. Even now, I get very angry when I read pieces by journalists who are taking cheap shots. I also hear them doing it on Sky News. They say, “Oh, they’re getting subsidised drink”, but they do not tell you that they are partaking of the subsidised food and drink.

That brings me to my concern, which is dual membership. You have to know whom you are dealing with. I could be in one of the cafeterias here having a cup of tea or whatever and bump into someone who I think is a journalist. If we enter into a discussion, I know whom I am dealing with. However, it would not do if the journalist were both a journalist and a lobbyist. You might ask whether that is possible. It is. Some people in the Press Gallery have been there for years and years, and they are entitled to be there, but sometimes their newspaper will say, “We’re sorry but you’re no longer required. You’re redundant”. That must have happened to the boys on the News of the World and there are others in that category. Some of them get to like this place so much that they will go to a regional newspaper or a publication and say, “I will be your reporter”. That would allow them to retain their press status, although not the salary.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

The prudent thing to do is to reflect on what both noble Lords have said. I will come back to them.

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

That sounds good to me.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I do not want to delay the House. I think I heard the Minister say that he was going to consider our amendments. In that light, I beg leave to withdraw.

Care Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Campbell-Savours and Lord Martin of Springburn

Tuesday 9th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, I will speak primarily to Amendment 88, in the wider context of Clause 9, and put an idea to the Minister that dawned on me during conversations with local authorities that are faced with problems in this area. Clause 9 deals with the assessment of an adult’s needs for care and support. It states:

“Where it appears to a local authority that an adult may have needs for care and support, the authority must,”

carry out an assessment. The clause goes on to list what the assessment must include. Amendment 88 would add,

“housing options to contribute to the achievement of those outcomes”.

What struck me as an outsider looking into these matters is that, irrespective of the changes to which the noble Lord, Lord Rix, referred, problems still arise where elderly people—perhaps in their 80s, 90s or whatever—have to transfer out of their homes, which they may well own, or from hospital into some kind of care environment, perhaps a nursing home. I wonder whether it would be possible for that process to be made more seamless in circumstances where a local authority took on the responsibility of marketing—I shall come on to what I mean by “marketing”—the home for sale, clearing the home and making all the arrangements for the transfer of that resident, be it from their home or from hospital, into a care environment.

It may be that a local authority could offer a package. At the moment, that package, in part, is offered by some of the charities. I have spoken to charities, such as Age Concern, which carry out various components in this process of transfer but I wonder whether money could be raised by local authorities through taking a proportion of the commission on the sale of properties by estate agents. In other words, a local authority would advertise within its area and estate agents could tender for the right to handle the properties for which the local authority took responsibility in this process of seamlessly transferring people from their homes to a caring environment.

As estate agents would not necessarily know whether they would get that business if it was organised in the wider market, if they knew they were going to get all the business provided by the local authority—in other words, that they would be the estate agent responsible for carrying out the process of transfer in a particular district—they might be prepared to share their commissions with the local authority because they had access to business which they might not otherwise have had. It would provide a revenue stream.

As we introduce amendment after amendment to the Bill, I keep thinking, “Where is the money coming from?”. It has to come from somewhere. It is all right Parliament passing legislation placing all these new responsibilities on authorities but, at the end of the day, the local authority has to find a way of raising the revenue. If local authorities could somehow attach themselves to the revenue from the sale of houses, it might well provide an income stream—and what better way to do so than to provide a package for the seamless transfer of the elderly into a more caring environment? I put it simply as a proposition that the Minister might wish to consider over time.

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

My Lords, everyone supports these amendments. I do not wish to detain the House but I would like to add my voice to that support.

When I became a councillor in 1973, it was my duty to concern myself with the housing problems of constituents who lived in my ward. After seven years, when I became a Member of Parliament, I thought the housing problems would go to the councillor who took my place. That was not the case. Right up to my last week of being a Member of Parliament, I was still receiving housing complaints and problems. I recall in another life, when I was a member of the Labour Party, some of my friends saying, “Education, education, education”—that was the motto—but I said there should be something else: “Housing, housing, housing”.

If people do not live in decent homes, they will not be able to do anything. If dampness is coming down the walls, the brightest child will never be able to study properly and get the best out of his or her education. So I say to the Minister that sometimes it is the simple things that matter in housing, not the expensive things that the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, has referred to.

I have mentioned dampness. There used to be a great deal of dampness in some of the houses in my area of Glasgow. A scheme was introduced—all credit to the Government, as it was not just the local authority —to bring in central heating. What a difference it made to the health of the young and old who lived in those houses. They could get up in the morning to a warm house and go to bed in the evening in a warm house. It meant that bronchitis, emphysema and all the other problems were greatly reduced.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Campbell-Savours and Lord Martin of Springburn

Tuesday 1st February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

If my noble friend feels that strongly about the matter, he can table an amendment, put the proposition to the House and we can vote on it, if that is the way he wishes to go.

I go further than most Members who have intervened in the debate in terms of the information that I believe should be included in the leaflet. First, it should be set out by the Electoral Commission where it is used. My noble friend Lord Grocott intervened to pose the important question of where AV is used, and the public need to know. Secondly, the public need to be informed that it is not a proportional representation system. There will be a great deal of misrepresentation during the course of the campaign about whether or not this is PR. It is not proportional representation and the Electoral Commission should make that clear. Thirdly, there will be a great deal of misrepresentation over the proportion of the electorate that a candidate is required to have to secure election—in other words, the argument about 50 per cent. Leaflets which refer to the 50 per cent are already being distributed and politicians are going on television stating that there is a 50 per cent requirement. Indeed, Jane Kennedy, a former Member of the other House, has recently written to a number of people in the no campaign drawing attention to inaccurate information which has been put out by the yes campaign. This is only the start; how much more difficult will it get?

There is a need to draw a distinction between the different AV systems because, with the media targeting the debate during the course of the campaign—as they inevitably will—they will draw on the distinctions between the three systems of AV, to which I have referred in previous debates. The Electoral Commission should make it clear exactly which one is being adopted but refer to the other two—one of which is the system used for the election of mayors in the United Kingdom.

The Electoral Commission should also point in its leaflet to the relevance of the need to use all preferences during the course of the ballot that takes place under AV—again I refer to the distinction between the Australian Queensland system and the conventional system used in Australia in federal elections—and that can be done in fairly simple language.

It also needs to be pointed out—this is far more argumentative—that AV does not necessarily lead to coalitions. Factually, it does not necessarily lead to coalitions, and yet the no campaign is arguing that coalitions are the inevitable consequence of the introduction of the alternative vote. That is not the case. It does lead to coalitions in certain circumstances but not in others. There are many issues which my noble friend Lord Davies would argue indicate an element of bias but which I believe should be factually placed before the electorate to enable them to take a proper decision.

Finally, I return to the timing of the referendum, an issue we debated last night. One of my fears is what will happen to the leaflets during the course of the referendum. If the referendum was held on a separate date, referendum leaflets would go through letter boxes all over the country. As it is, because the referendum is to take place on the same day as elections in various parts of the United Kingdom, referendum leaflets will be mixed with election leaflets and many will go in the bin. I am very sorry, but that is the case. Again I say to the Liberal Democrats that they have chosen the wrong date and, even at this late stage, they should revisit the decisions they have taken on these matters and which they have forced upon the coalition.

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

My Lords, I would happily support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, which would leave out,

“may take whatever steps they think appropriate to”

and insert “must”, but I am worried about the preparation of the leaflets. As I mentioned in my previous intervention, Amendment 110ZZA would provide that,

“The leaflet shall be distributed, so far as is practicable, to all households in the United Kingdom”.

When I asked, no one had put a price on such a project, although it would be a very costly project indeed. Although I have always taken advice from the noble Lord, Lord Newton—in another place, he was Leader of the House, and a very good Leader at that—I must advise him that those health leaflets did not come through in Scotland, possibly because of the devolved arrangements. I do not know whether such leaflets would have gone out under the auspices of the local health board or of a government department, but I worry about legislating that a specific body—namely, the Electoral Commission—publish leaflets and distribute them to every household in the land. That is a tall order for the Electoral Commission. With great respect, some Members of this House do not know just how big or small the Electoral Commission is. There is a limit to its resources.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Campbell-Savours and Lord Martin of Springburn

Monday 17th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

I agree with the noble Lord, but if a Member of a devolved Parliament was paid to deal with health, prisons and social work, while the noble Lord quite rightly would not turn a person away he would find a way of notifying his constituent that the democratic process meant that some matters were devolved to another elected Member. That is the point I wanted to make.

As a trade union officer I noted that no two officers worked in the same way, and it is the same with Members of Parliament. What I am trying to say is that there are ridiculous practices and that I have highlighted one of them. There is no point in honourable Members saying that they are overburdened when they create rods for their own backs.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I have to say to my noble friend that I am slightly disturbed by his comments about petitions. If I remember rightly, my noble friend’s constituency was an inner city seat in Glasgow, but what if he had been in a seat in rural Scotland and the village school was about to close and 500 constituents wrote to him about that closure? It would be a highly contested issue in that part of the constituency. Does my noble friend not feel that perhaps in those circumstances each of the 500 petitioners should receive a communication from their Member of Parliament? It makes them feel that they are participating in the debate and that their Member of Parliament is actually responding and not just taking them for granted.

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

All I can say to my noble friend, as he has called me, is that if three of the names on the petition were from the same household and they were sent three individual letters, something would be wrong. I say as well that something would be wrong if £13,000-worth of envelopes were being used. The point I wanted to make was that something was wrong with that.

Let me make another point about pressure. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the noble Lord, Lord Graham. As the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, will remember, he was our Chief Whip between 1979 and 1981. I was sad to see him leave the House. He kept us until 10 o’clock on a Thursday night in the Commons. I know that to be the case because a whole load of us went up to Glasgow on the sleeper train. For years now, unless it has changed since the last election, debates on a Thursday are non-voting. That begs the question: is every Member of Parliament right there in the House of Commons, to which they were elected, on a Thursday, or are they elsewhere? I would hazard a guess that they are elsewhere. I am not criticising them because that is their business, but the case has been put that there are more pressures on this generation of Members of Parliament than there were on the old.

There was a fairly hefty pressure on Members of Parliament, if they were lucky, to leave on a Thursday. The Minister could not even take the sleeper train because of the distance to his constituency. He would not have been able to get back by the Friday. I was lucky enough to get to mine by the following morning. Also, constituency engagements were such that it was not pleasant to travel overnight. You would have surgeries and meetings with various organisations.

There are other amendments that I can comfortably support, and I know that this is a probing amendment, but there is no point in us being here if we do not express our views. I do not see that we need great academic bodies to do a study on whether we should have a reduction of 10 per cent.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Campbell-Savours and Lord Martin of Springburn

Wednesday 12th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

My Lords, I support everything that the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, said. My amendment talks about eight years. I address my remarks to the Minister. The purpose is to give new Members of Parliament a chance to get at least two years serving in the House. If I look around, at least 20 noble Lords have served in the other place. I think they will all readily acknowledge that you do not learn your craft as a Member of Parliament within one term; far from it. I am stating the obvious that, apart from London Members of Parliament who have other pressures and difficulties, every Monday every Member of Parliament has to be on the road leaving their wife or husband and family to travel down here to London. In some cases that is a considerable distance, through all sorts of weather. When they come to the House they work with enthusiasm for what they do.

I was always impressed by Members of Parliament who raised such things as Adjournment debates about the problems of other countries, such as famine or the loss of civil liberties and civil rights. They got no votes for that. They did not do that for selfish reasons; they did it because they wanted a better world. It will be a very sad day if, as soon as a Member of Parliament arrives at Westminster, they worry about whether they will hold that office after the next election. I do not think that there will be any difficulty finding Members of Parliament to serve for the five years about which the Minister is talking.

In all the time that I have been in Parliament, everyone has always said that they want a good cross-section of the community, which is a good thing. I remember the Falklands debate in which former soldiers from every side of the House talked about the adrenaline when on a troop ship. They had come from another life, and the whole House, including young Members who had never been in the forces, were able to enjoy that.

I was on the Floor of the House when two former miners from the north-east of England described what it was like to be in a coalmine when the dust was flying and there were all sorts of dangers. They held that House in the palms of their hands and every Member listened. During a debate on hanging, I listened to Conservative Members who had represented people who were being defended against the chance of being sentenced to capital punishment. My point is that there were people from every walk of life.

I would not like to say that we do not want young people who leave university, work for an MP and then become a Member of Parliament. There is a place for them, but if the House becomes completely full of young researchers who had worked for MPs and then got a parliamentary seat, that would not be the representative body that we need in our Parliament. It would be far from that.

At the other end of the ladder, the ladies in this House have rightly argued that we need more women in Parliament. There was talk about all-women shortlists in order to get more ladies into Parliament, which is right, but will we get a lady who is typical of someone in my constituency, such as a home help with two children? She would have to say to her husband, “Well, I have got a chance of going into Parliament”. Her husband might say, “But you could get promotion in the health service. You will only get one term out of this”.

I know that someone might say, “The electorate can take you out”, but every Member of Parliament takes that chance. I used to cringe when people said to me, “You’ve got a safe Labour seat”. I did not have a safe Labour seat. You fight for every vote and you support the people in your community. In a marginal seat—I have seen this happen—where a Member of Parliament comes in with a majority or 23 or 24, they can build up the support and are willing to do that, but the boundary commissioner coming around with a pencil and cutting up the map is perhaps something that they would not want. We have people who were successful in business and are now retired and well off. We will also have young people. I do not think they should be barred, but if that was all of them we would not have people from every walk of life in our Parliament. Here in your Lordships’ House we make every endeavour to get people from every walk of life. We have judges, QCs and engineers like me who are able to talk about the engineering industry. We will lose that.

What kind of strain are we going to put on Members of Parliament when, as family men and women, their children say, “We want to go to the pictures. We want to have a day out”? The husband or the wife comes up the road on a Thursday only to get a phone call saying that there is a difficulty over employment, or in the local hospital or local authority. The day out for the children is spoilt. I know that from my own experience. I was raised as the son of a merchant seaman. My father was never in the house because he had to earn a living. I was determined that, whatever time I had in Glasgow, my children would be with me. That meant taking them to all sorts of rallies, ward meetings and trade union meetings. The poor wee souls were bored out of their skulls, but there was a promise that afterwards there would be a trip to the pictures, a museum, or something more enjoyable.

My case for this amendment is that it is not about delay or any other argument. We go into schools through the efforts of the Lord Speaker. I do not think that there is a noble Lord or a Member of Parliament who would refuse a visit to a school or college or would say that politics is not a good and rewarding thing to be in. Not one of them would do that. It is my understanding that this House has a scheme through which we encourage young people to get involved in Parliament. How can that encouragement tie in with putting forward a case that you are going to get only one term?

A lot has been said about the Executive and Ministers. I know the difficulties with Ministers because they want to talk. That is why I enjoy being in the House of Lords: because I did not get to speak for 10 years. Ministers want to talk all the time, but each and every one of them is doing an important job, and the law officers look after a department. How will it be if, within five years, there is a chance that their boundary will change? Sometimes unworthy things can come to the fore with boundary changes. Sometimes Back-Bench parliamentary colleagues might say, “Well, John can’t turn up because he is a Minister, you see, but I am free to come to your meeting”. “Don’t vote for John when we have the boundary change”, does not have to be said because the strong hint will have been put.

From a party political point of view, I used to be in the Labour Party and now I am on the Cross Benches. I enjoy this neutrality, but I also enjoy the workings of every political party because I have sat in the Tea Room with colleagues sometimes until one or two in the morning. I know especially the workings of the Labour Party. The minute boundary changes are on the horizon, I can hear the phrases yet: “You had better start getting the delegates in. You had better go to your trade union. You had better go to your Co-op and your affiliated societies and get them in”. It is not good for democracy if you are doing that every five years. I will tell you what will happen. I used to read stories about the ward bosses in Boston, and we will get ward bosses in our cities, and, indeed, in our spread out rural areas, who can deliver the votes. That, to me, is not what parliamentary democracy is about.

I say only this to the Ministers, and I do it with the best of intentions; we want good people from every background and every possible age group, so give them a chance of serving for at least two terms as parliamentarians.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My noble friend Lord Martin of Springburn has just made a very important contribution to this debate, because he knows what will happen in the real world in the event of the Government going forward with the five-year principle. My noble friend spelled out all the experiences that I know many Members of the other place, on all sides of the House, had during their political lifetimes, whereby, when they were confronted by Boundary Commission inquiries, all kinds of abnormal things would happen in their constituencies—often things that they did not even comprehend.

I have asked the Minister a series of questions. Would he care, in winding up the debate on this amendment, to answer them or undertake to let me have replies before next Monday? I understand that he might not have the information with him now, but I would like to know about the Cabinet Office’s code of practice on consultation.

On the security of tenure, I apologise to my noble friend Lord Grocott for having to disagree with him on the basis of his response to my earlier intervention. I believe that individuals often consider their likely period of tenure in the House of Commons prior to being elected. They have it in mind for all sorts of reasons. I cannot count the number of times over recent years when I have asked people, “Would you go into Parliament?”. I have asked people whom I thought were worthy and who would make good MPs. They would say to me, “I will never touch it. I wouldn’t go near the place”. That is invariably because they are wary of the insecurity that arises, particularly now, after the expenses inquiry. Every time an IPSA story appears in the national press, whereby it is being criticised for its lack of sensitivity in its treatment of MPs, and when MPs are being attacked almost daily both in regional and national newspapers and their integrity is often undermined by journalists, perfectly honourable people are put off the political process. It is that, along with the prospect of a brief tenure in Parliament, which I believe influences the judgments that people make.

I also know of former MPs, not only in here but outside, who have lost their jobs. When they have left Parliament, they have found that no work is available outside because they have the lost the skills or knowledge that would be required for them to practise their trade, skill or professional work. People also have that in mind when they consider whether to enter. It is a question not only of what they think as individuals but also of what their families think. Many people have been stopped from going into Parliament on the basis of a spouse or family view as to whether the family can take the financial or the employment risk. That is the case even under present arrangements, whereby there is at least an acceptable term between boundary reviews and changes. Under the Government’s proposals, it will be far worse. The Government are bringing into that calculation all those considerations of insecurity, which will turn families off and whereby they are more than likely to say to an aspiring MP in the family, “Please don’t do it. We just can’t afford the risk”.

That is basically my case. I argue that what is being proposed is wrong, that the period is too short and that the insecurity that it will breed should not be entertained. My final view is that it will influence the quality of people who are attracted to going into the House of Commons. My noble friend says, “Well, there will always be people who want to go into Parliament”. There are always people who want to go on to councils, but the quality of some local authority representation in the United Kingdom is absolutely appalling.

To be frank, there were people in the other place when I was there who I would have had difficulty voting for myself—we know who we are talking about. Some of them, frankly, were not fit to be in the House of Commons, but they got there. If the Government want to create a House of Commons to which more and more people seek nomination who are not of sufficient calibre to enter the place and do a good job, they are making a very grave error.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Campbell-Savours and Lord Martin of Springburn

Monday 10th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

The noble Lord talked about a group. I am presuming that all parties belong to this group and not just the Liberal Party. It was the way the noble Lord phrased it. Forgive me: I will not press my noble and learned friend.

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

My Lords, I can possibly help. I have said on the Floor of this House that it was the case when I was Speaker that the Electoral Commission had to report. There was a weakness in the Electoral Commission in that it would not allow former party agents in its membership. As a result, although there were former chief executives of local authorities, you never got someone like Jimmy Allison—God rest his soul—who used to be the wily agent of the Labour Party in Scotland. As a result, it was agreed that there would be an informal committee to give the type of advice that was needed when there were proposals for delivering leaflets and meeting the electorate. We all know that when you meet the electorate, sometimes you have to face an Alsatian dog, and when you get by the Alsatian, you get a Rottweiler. The chief executives did not really know about that, but Labour Party agents did.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Campbell-Savours and Lord Martin of Springburn

Monday 10th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I thought that I was taking an intervention. I hope that the noble Lord will forgive me. The Government will not get off that lightly.

The Government should be reminded of the relevant sections in the very well written report of the House of Lords Constitution Committee on the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill. I understand that the report’s recommendations were carried unanimously by the membership of that committee. All parties subscribed to the principles set out in paragraph 11, which states:

“We regret the fact that this Bill has not been subject to either pre-legislative scrutiny, or to prior public consultation”.

That is to say, Liberal Democrat and Conservative Peers all support that statement.

The report continues:

“We conclude that the Government have not calculated the proposed reduction in the size of the House of Commons on the basis of any considered assessment of the role and functions of MPs”.

My noble friend’s proposed inquiry would do precisely that. It is fair to ask the question: why 600? Why not 590? Why not 500, as my noble friend Lord Rooker has suggested? Why not 550? Why not 700 or 800? All the coalition Government have done is pick figures out of the air and say, “Yes, the Liberal Democrats want 500; the Conservatives want 600. Let’s settle on that figure”. That is not the basis on which the size of what is perhaps the most important Parliament in the world should be decided.

We then have to consider the whole issue of Lords reform. Until we know what the arrangements for an elected House will be, how can we even begin to comprehend the nature of the relationship that will develop between individual constituents—because there may well be individual constituents—and Members of an elected House of Lords, and the extent to which that will impact on how many MPs there should be in the House of Commons? That matter has not even entered into the discussions that have taken place prior to the introduction of this legislation.

There is also the whole question of population, on which I intervened during my noble friend’s speech. I have pondered over the Christmas Recess on why population should not be taken into account when, particularly in the inner cities, many of the people who come to MPs’ surgeries would be excluded from the electoral register. I cannot see why those groups who are excluded should not be taken into account when one is deciding the workload of a Member of Parliament and the size of any constituency.

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

The noble Lord makes a valid point about people who are not on the electoral roll. I think of my previous constituency of Glasgow North East, to which the Home Office decided that a large number of asylum seekers would come. Not one of them, with the problems that they had, was turned away. Moreover, almost every asylum seeker had a lawyer who would also make representation to me as the local MP. It got to the stage where 90 per cent of the cases coming to surgeries were those of asylum seekers. Only those who were Commonwealth citizens as well as being asylum seekers were entitled to go on to the voters’ roll.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

That intervention by my noble friend is extremely significant. That matter has not been taken into account by the Government. I know that there were problems in Glasgow, because I have been reading about them. There was a huge campaign that was referred to a few weeks ago by my noble friend Lord Foulkes of Cumnock to deal with the whole issue of registration, which threw up the particular problem to which my noble friend referred. Indeed, the Democratic Audit paper on further findings on equalisation, which no doubt most Members of the House will either have read or will want to read prior to our debates in the future, deals precisely with this issue of population. Mr Lewis Baston says:

“Approximately half of the countries that delimit districts use ‘total population’ as the population base for determining equality across electoral districts. Another third of the countries employ registered voters as the population base”.

Several European countries use citizen population as the relevant base for determining population equality. Lesotho uses the voting age population as the base and Belarus uses the number of voters in the previous election, although that would not be particularly helpful here, would it?

The facts are that countries can use census material and population statistics as against registered electors, particularly when we know that the registered electorate, as far as the purposes of this Bill are concerned, are based on a register that is effectively out of date and which excludes, as my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer of Thoroton was saying only a few weeks ago, some 3.5 million people. Some 3.5 million people are excluded from the register. Why cannot the great proportion of those be included on a register by changing the basis on which the register is drawn by moving it over to a more population-based system?